Una Hora En MALBA

Spent an hour at Malba, the Latin American Museum of Art in Buenos Aires, en route to record shopping... a glorious collection of mind-bending work, far too deep, varied, and interesting to truly explore in a mere hour... poor planning on my part, I should've probably spent the whole afternoon out here...

from Malba's website:
Malba’s collection focuses on art produced in Latin America during the 20^th Century, and is made up of a group of over two hundred and seventy works by Argentinean and Latin American artists. It is an institutional collection that is the patrimony of the Eduardo F. Costantini Foundation. Most of its works were donated by Malba’s founder, issuing from the collection he brought together largely during the eighties and nineties. During the museum’s three years of public operation, its patrimony has grown, thanks to its acquisition program and to the generous donations received from artists as well as artists’ family members and individual donors.

Initially revolving around Modern and avant-garde movements of the Río de la Plata area, particularly during the ‘10s and ‘20s, the Costantini collection has in the past decade established itself as one of the main players on the international stage, bringing together one of the world’s most significant ensembles of 20^th Century Latin American art. Artists and works from countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile have made their way into the collection, which has become increasingly active in Europe and in the United States in terms of its institutional loans policy. From 1997, the project began to take on a public, permanent dimension; and the decisions and steps leading to Malba’s constitution, construction and inauguration gathered pace, culminating in its completion in September 2001.

Since opening its doors to the public, the permanent exhibition of its patrimony has remained one of Malba - Costantini Collection’s main institutional objectives. Most of its Latin American art collection can always be found on display in the museum’s central rooms, presenting visitor and viewer with different approaches and new readings of the region’s art history, from the first avant-garde movements of the 20th Century to the most contemporary productions from the past few decades. A group of Latin American art’s true master works that includes Retrato de Ramón Gómez de la Serna (Portrait of Ramón Gómez de la Serna) by Diego Rivera, Abaporú by Tarsila do Amaral, La mañana verde (The Green Morning) by Wifredo Lam, Autorretrato con chango y loro (Self-portrait with Monkey and Parrot) by Frida Kahlo, El viudo (The Widower) by Fernando Botero and Rompecabezas (Puzzle) by Jorge de la Vega is complemented by important suites of work by artists such as Xul Solar, Rafael Barradas, Agustín Lazo, Roberto Matta, Antonio Berni, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Antônio Dias, León Ferrari and Liliana Porter.